In Conversation: Nicola Nymalm on From ‘Japan Problem’ to ‘China Threat’?

IN CONVERSATION WITH NICOLA NYMALM

20 January 2022

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Nicola Nymalm about her latest book From ‘Japan Problem’ to ‘China Threat’?

A fascinating read, this book shows that the ‘new era’ in US-Chinese relations that scholars and policymakers have been announcing since the beginning of the Trump presidency was long in the making, as it rests on longstanding discourses on the USA’s main economic competitor.

We started our conversation by looking at the issue of economic power and threat perceptions.

Historically, rapid material growth has resulted in rising powers being viewed as threats. But you argue that growing economic power does not necessarily have to result in a 'China threat' or a 'Japan problem'.

What, then, are the sources of such threat perceptions, and what can be done to prevent the next 'rising power' from a similar fate as Japan and China?

This is an important, but also quite a complex question. To start with, it is not entirely accurate to say that ‘historically, rapid material growth has resulted in rising powers being viewed as threats’. The view that this is the case has a lot to do with the way ‘power’ and ‘rising powers’ are traditionally understood and theorised in the discipline of International Relations (IR). These views have then proliferated into policymaking circles.

There is indeed a strong tradition within IR that defines and measures ‘power’ mainly as material capability, and it understands or defines ‘rising powers’ as those states that exhibit rapid material growth. In a nutshell, this tradition assumes that rising powers are intent on revising the international order as they seek political influence and status in accordance with their increasing material capabilities. This challenges the leading power(s) in the international order and is expected to lead to a power shift and/or transition. Conventional wisdom in IR according to, (offensive) realism and power transition theory (PTT) particularly, also holds that in most cases power transitions entail disruptions and bear strong potential for great power war. Hence, all these assumptions contribute to rising powers being viewed with ‘suspicion’.

While still popular within and beyond IR, these understandings have also been criticised and questioned as historically inaccurate, too simplistic, and even dangerous in the sense of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. To avoid ‘automatically’ understanding rising powers as potential threats, we need to continue unpacking the conventional wisdom by asking questions such as: are all so-called rising powers the same? Why do only some countries end up being labelled ‘rising powers’, but not others? Why do more recent uses of the term typically refer only to non-Western states? Do increased material capabilities always lead to a quest for more status and influence? Who perceives whom as threatening, and from what perspective and context? As the two cases in my book show, the picture is more complicated than conventional wisdom assumes.

You note that although both Japan and China were initially applauded as ‘economic miracles’, in both cases, their economic success strained bilateral ties with the US and raised concerns about the prospects for global cooperation.

Why has this been the case?

The short answer is that Japan’s and China’s economic success turned them into the US’ main economic competitors. While competition as such should not be a reason to strain bilateral ties — especially from the perspective of the self-declared champion of liberal democratic capitalism — in both cases, the competitor was soon perceived as outperforming the US. This — and this is part of the longer explanation — contradicted both the US’ self-image as well as its expectations towards its ‘junior partners’.

While the respective bilateral relations with the US differed a lot in terms of historical context and political circumstances, in both cases it was expected that Japan and China would adhere to the liberal democratic capitalist trajectory and become — to simplify a bit here — more like the US. Their perceived deviation from that trajectory coupled with still being economically successful to the extent of outperforming the US (which became a debtor and deficit trading partner to both, Japan and China), not only challenged the US’ self-image as an economic, but also global power and leader more broadly.

At least in the case of China, the above-described conventional wisdom on rising powers and all the ‘dangers’ they might bring, eventually also played a role. A search for explanations for Japan’s and China’s economic success despite their deviation from the ‘model trajectory’ soon led to allegations that they were only successful because they were not playing fair. While there were legitimate concerns regarding some economic practices, the political debates and public rhetoric in both cases contributed to significantly strained bilateral ties, which was perhaps even more surprising and less expected in the case of Japan given its close alliance with the US.

You indicate that by the end of the 1980s, Japan was increasingly seen as a ‘non-Western and non-liberal society’ which could not participate in the Western liberal economic order. Yet, today, Japan is an important part of the West’s attempts to contain China (eg the Quad).

How did this change in the US’ perception of Japan come about?

The idea of post-WWII Japan being ‘more different’ to the extent of even being ‘incompatible’ with the OECD West was mainly advocated by those in the US who wanted to see a different, more hardline economic policy towards Japan. The so-called ‘revisionists’ were the most prominent advocates of this approach. According to their arguments, conducting economic policies in line with the principles of ‘free trade’ and ‘open markets’ with Japan could not work (and would do nothing to bring down the trade deficit and debt on the US side, which were the major concerns), because Japan was ‘culturally too different’. Japan just did not function like Western economies, such as the US, which was why the US needed to stop believing that Japan would become more like the US and change its approach.

Even though the revisionist views became dominant during the late Clinton administration, leading to a change in economic policy that ultimately failed to achieve the expected results, there was also a constant opposition to them. The opponents, for example, warned against making Japan a scapegoat for the US’ domestic economic problems and jeopardising their security alliance with the ensuing heated political debates and rhetoric. However, it seems the ‘Japan problem’ was mainly resolved when the Japanese economy began to significantly retract after the early/mid-1990s and its role as the major deficit trading partner and creditor to the US was soon taken up by China. Hence, the focus in Washington regarding these issues shifted from Tokyo to Beijing.

When it comes to Japan’s role more recently, briefly, it not only builds on the ongoing security alliance between the US and Japan but also on strains in Japan-China bilateral relations because of unresolved historical disputes and domestic politics in both countries.

Could you summarise the main differences between the ‘Japan Problem’ and ‘China threat’ narratives?

As mentioned briefly earlier, there were of course differences in the bilateral and economic relations between Japan and the US in the past, and between China and the US more recently, and these have played a role in the discourses.

Shortly after WWII, Japan and the US became security partners and allies, which was articulated in positive and negative ways in discourses on the ‘Japan problem’. Those worried about the potential negative impact of economic frictions on the security relationship, for example, emphasised Japan’s role as an economic powerhouse and democracy in Asia. Those critical of Japan’s economic policies were accusing Japan of being a ‘lousy ally’ in terms of free riding under the US security umbrella while doing nothing to contribute to a more balanced trade relationship. The most intense allegations evoked images of Japan as a treacherous WWII enemy that had come back to ‘win the war economically’.

The relationship with China has been on a different footing from the start. While China had been an ally during WWII, it soon became the ‘communist other’ next to the former Soviet Union and remained ideologically suspect even after the Nixon visits and Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. The main thread in the discourses on China has been whether economic engagement policies would have an impact on not only China’s economic but also political system and contribute to its liberalisation and democratisation, or whether China simply was and will remain and even grow as a ‘communist threat’ and human rights violator. In general, at least until approximately the early 2000s, economic discourses on China seemed not to have reached the same intensity and hostility as the earlier ones on Japan. This has started to change more recently, not least under the previous Trump administration.

What are the most important lessons from the Japan episode for managing ties with China today?

Looking back at the Japan episode, (which few people actually do), some say that it was the US-Japan security alliance that prevented their relations from further deteriorating. Others suggest that Japan being an ally and not posing any security threat allowed the most intense debates about the country to become quite unhinged, while the US has to be more ‘careful’ with China as their relationship lacks the political foundations and mechanisms that made ‘normalisation’ with Japan possible again.

While members of the former Trump administration certainly were not the only ones who did not choose their words carefully when speaking about China’s economic policies, we saw in the Japan case that words uttered by public officials do matter and have real-world consequences. Rhetorical ‘Japan bashing’ became actual violence against Japanese-Americans in some cases, and we have seen a shocking increase in violence and hate crimes against Asian-Americans in general in the US more recently. This was mostly attributed to the Trump administration’s rhetoric regarding the origins of the COVID pandemic, but already long before that, his administration did not mince words on China as an economic competitor.

On a different level, many economists did criticise the extensive focus and framing of the US trade deficit as ‘proof’ of the respective trading partner not playing fair — instead of looking at structural domestic issues behind the deficit — during the Japan episode. This criticism remains valid and is partly repeated today. This is not to say that there are no legitimate concerns with some of China’s economic practices and policies (as there were with Japan), but that again, the simplified black and white language of ‘they cheat, we are fair’ does not capture the complexities in many cases.

Is there a ‘China Threat’? If so, what is its nature? If not, why is this notion so popular today?

The answer to this question depends on the context, ie whom one asks. A threat for whom or against what? As I said above, a lot of our assumptions and presuppositions about rising powers being potentially or actually threatening are based less on ‘general historical lessons’ than on particular theoretical reasonings (often based on a selective, Euro- or Western-centric reading of history) that have evolved into conventional wisdom.

According to the perspective I take in the book, threats are not just ‘out there’ but are always threats for someone/something in some place/position with some ‘interests’ or stakes. This means that notions such as the ‘China threat’ or the very much in vogue ‘China challenge’ that are formulated as if they were capturing ‘simple objective facts’ are unhelpful as they can mean different things for different audiences. For example, is China threatening the so-called ‘liberal international order’? The answer depends very much not only on what China does but also on what we understand this order to be and what our position or stakes in it are.

However, problematising labels such as ‘China threat’, as I do in the book, is not to say that there are no legitimate concerns with China’s domestic and international politics (in and beyond the sphere of economics that the book focuses on). Matters ranging from, for example, economic issues such as intellectual property rights and the role of state-owned enterprises, to geopolitical ones such as creating facts on the ground by building artificial islands in the South China Sea, should of course be addressed by the international community of which China is a part. However, bellicose rhetoric in the form of catchy labels intended to spark alarmism bears a rather small chance of contributing to resolving actual issues at stake.

In an era of trade wars, supply chain decoupling, and a growing preference for national self-reliance, how do you expect economic relations, especially between China and the US, to evolve in the coming years?

Before the Biden administration took over, there was some speculation on how it would approach the economic policies constituting the so-called ‘trade war’ his predecessor had incited. In a nutshell, some commentaries suggested that while Biden would change the tone, he might not change the substance that much. I think this is largely what we have seen so far.

While there have been considerations on rolling back at least some of the tariffs on the US side, nothing substantial has happened yet. Observers connect this to the fact that a negative view of China is quite widespread among the broader public as well as among both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, which makes it unlikely that the administration would aim at any major changes in existing China policies. And the same seems to be the case on the Chinese side.

In my view, even though a major ‘decoupling’ is hard to imagine given the interconnectedness of the two economies, there may be a degree of separation in the coming years. For example, we have seen that the blacklisting of Chinese high-tech companies in the US-led to the assessment in Beijing that to become less dependent on US technology and thus less vulnerable to any kind of sanctions, China needed to become what Xi Jinping called ‘self-reliant’ in technological innovation. This, in turn, has further raised concerns among those in the US who worry about the transfer of knowledge of critical or sensitive technologies to China. In sum, it is unfortunately quite difficult to say something positive about US-China economic relations at least in the near future.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Biography

Nicola Nymalm (PhD) joined the Swedish Defence University (FHS) as Assistant Professor in War Studies in January 2020. Previously she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI). Her research interests include relations between ‘established’ and ‘emerging’ powers drawing from critical approaches to IR, IPE, security, and military studies. Her work has appeared in journals such as International Political Sociology, International Studies Review, Review of International Studies and Journal of International Relations and Development. Her latest book From 'Japan Problem' to 'China Threat'? is available here.